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Maria Konnikova Shows Her Cards
As a science writer at The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova, 34, focuses on the brain, and the weird and interesting ways people use their brains. Dr. Konnikova is an experimental psychologist trained at Columbia University. But her latest experiment is on herself. For a book she’s researching on luck and decision-making, Dr. Konnikova began studying poker. Within a year, she had moved from poker novice to poker professional, winning more than $200,000 in tournament jackpots. This summer Poker Stars, an online gaming site, began sponsoring Dr. Konnikova in professional tournaments. We spoke recently for two hours at the offices of The Times.
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Researchers Investigate Problems with MTurk Data
Some psychological researchers and other social scientists are warning about a possible problem with survey data being collected through the widely-used online tool Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The researchers recently detected a noticeable number of survey responses from repeating GPS coordinates, indicating the presence of possible bots with spoof accounts. More details on the issue can be found online (here and here), along with a proposed standardized procedure to test whether responses from repeating GPS coordinates provide evidentiary value.
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This plate design gets young kids to eat more veggies, study finds
Segmented plates with pictures of recommended foods in each compartment led preschoolers to eat more vegetables, according to a research letter published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. These lunch trays have shown similar results in elementary school kids, but not in younger children. The researchers say that this could be a tool to nudge children toward healthy habits early in life. "It's a really important time period in children's lives to experience fruits and vegetables," said report author Emily Melnick, a doctoral candidate in health and behavioral sciences at the University of Colorado Denver.
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A ‘Generationally Perpetuated’ Pattern: Daughters Do More Chores
It has long been true that women are paid less than men at work and do more of the labor at home. It turns out those patterns start as early as childhood. Although there are a few signs that the gap is shrinking, a variety of data shows that girls still spend more time on household chores than boys do. They are also paid less than boys for doing chores and have smaller allowances. One recent analysis, for example, found that boys ages 15 to 19 do about half an hour of housework a day, and girls about 45 minutes. Although girls spend a little less time on chores than they did a decade ago, the time that boys spend hasn’t significantly changed.
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The Cognitive Biases Tricking Your Brain
I am staring at a photograph of myself that shows me 20 years older than I am now. I have not stepped into the twilight zone. Rather, I am trying to rid myself of some measure of my present bias, which is the tendency people have, when considering a trade-off between two future moments, to more heavily weight the one closer to the present. A great many academic studies have shown this bias—also known as hyperbolic discounting—to be robust and persistent. Most of them have focused on money. When asked whether they would prefer to have, say, $150 today or $180 in one month, people tend to choose the $150.
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Research Suggests Exposure to Multiculturalism Prompts People to Inflate the Importance of Race
As the United States—and much of the world—becomes more ethnically diverse, how can we all get along? For many, the obvious answer is multiculturalism, the belief that respecting cultural differences can create a more just and equitable society for all. But new research provides evidence that promoting this philosophy can be highly problematic. In a sad irony, it finds exposure to a multicultural mindset prompts people to inflate the importance of race, bolstering the assumption that individuals can be fundamentally defined by their skin tone.
